Room 15 ASDAN Party

In Room 15, our hard-work culminated in getting to enjoy the party we have spent the last 8 weeks planning and preparing for as part of our ASDAN Transition Challenge work.  Some of us needed no encouragement to party, and we all joined in with time.  It was a fun way to celebrate our achievements and wind down for the end of term!

We’ve also expanded a lot of our ASDAN New Horizons work on emotions to apply some of the regulation skills we have been learning about throughout our school day and explore practical applications of our learning.  Music is a definite favourite in our class!

A special shout out has to be made for the progress made with everyday routines – from coming to sit with the group independently for familiar activities, to following modeled instructions for the first time, to trying new foods, to eating more independently, to spontaneously using a new communication element (such as a new sign or communicating for a new function) – the team are incredibly proud of how hard you have worked.  Well done Room 15!

As we move forward this term we’ll be exploring time as we learn about when special events occur (we can definitely expect a messy bucket time for fireworks day!) and use technology to prepare for them.

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle

Room 17 have been combining our work on reusing and recycling with our numeracy work looking at shapes.  We’ve reused lots of empty packaging to make big building blocks.  This has given us a great opportunity to explore 3D shapes. Some of us thought the best bit was knocking down our towers and some of us enjoyed the smells from the packaging. We also reused empty bottles and old newspapers to make a skittles game.  We had lots of fun playing skittles.

Outdoor Learning does water play

Over the last few weeks classes have been exploring water in Outdoor Education lessons.  We have poured, splashed, sprayed, puddled about and giggled.  Everyone found a way to play with water that they enjoyed.  Throwing large bucket of water around the playground and watching it fall and then make a loud splat noise was the grand finale for most classes. We hope you enjoy the photos as much as we enjoyed playing with water.

A busy start in Room 15

Room 15 have been incredibly busy these last few weeks!  Alongside building relationships and establishing routines, we’ve also been hard at work.

We’ve launched ourselves into our ASDAN projects – exploring friendship for PSE as we get to know our classmates, and planning a social event for our Transition Challenge work (ASDAN work is a legitimate reason for an end of term party, no?).  We’ve used technology to vote for our social activity and prepare a music playlist, and we’ve made decorations.  We’ll be continuing to build on this over the coming weeks.

We’ve had bucket time sessions where we build our focused attention skills.  It has been brilliant to see the progress our class are already making with focusing on the bucket.  Check out the rainbows we painted for our first stage four activity (independent work task)!

We’ve also introduced a life skills session to our timetable, where we’ve been sharing responsibility for our classroom and increasing independence with skills relating to cleaning and tidying up.

Last week we made the most of the fabulous weather and took our snack outside – a lovely opportunity to enjoy those friendships we’ve been building since we came back.

Hair Washing for ASDAN

Some of the pupils in Room 16 chose that they wanted to learn how to wash hair as part of their ASDAN award. They practised brushing hair, rinsing, applying shampoo and conditioner and drying it. We were all very impressed with how careful everyone was – there was no shampoo in anyone’s eyes! The end results were fantastic and there were two very happy staff customers.

Wider World ASDAN

This term we have been working on an ASDAN module on the Wider World.  So far we have explored Scottish culture through the Whole School Burn’s Day activities. 

Then we researched famous people from different countries and more recently explored some musical instruments from around the world.  As well as watching video clips of the instruments being played, we learned about how some of them are made and some traditional dances to the music.  Over 5 weeks the pupils explored different instruments and made their own instruments from recycled materials. 

Then in the final week we explored the phenomenon that is the One-man-band! 

We aren’t finished the module yet, but wanted to share our hard work and awesome photos so far.  It’s been a fun topic to explore via Google classroom, with loads of positive feedback and giggly photos being shared.  Well done Room 19!

Here are some links to one-man-band video clips for you to enjoy:

Hard at Work and Play in Secondary

There’s been lots of work going on in Secondary over the last couple of weeks. It’s good to see pupils continuing to to work towards ASDAN awards and SQA qualifications while learning remotely. There have also been some very successful Google Meets and I know the staff involved in these have very much enjoyed seeing you all!

We have one young lady who working on SQA: Looking After Animals. She is taking good care of her new kitten.

We have pupils working on SQA Leisure Time Activities. This supports us in trying out new activities alongside engaging in things we already know and enjoy.

We’ve also been keeping fit, both indoors and out. There is a great range of activities in the PE Google Classroom. Please do pop in for a look if you’ve not already done so. Throwing and catching has been practised this week.

Life Skills and Independence

We continue to work on our life skills and independence. We’ve been baking: scones, a rainbow cake and savoury pancakes are a few of the recipes we’ve tried. Cooking and baking are great ways to practice our numeracy skills.

Assembly ‘Homework’

Our Secondary Assembly theme was ‘Love’ and we’ve now been tasked with showing love for someone over the next two weeks. This can take many forms: doing something to help someone else, being kind to someone, doing something that someone else enjoys, or for our staff and parents, showing yourself some kindness and taking a bit of time for you!

Following our previous Assembly where we had a theme of ‘Express Yourself’ in line with Children’s Mental Health Week, we enjoyed seeing photos of how others have done this.

Reading and Relaxing at Home

Being Creative through Art and Music

Enjoying Time Outdoors